Non Profit Cloud Backup Guide
This Non Profit Cloud Backup guide is for Canadian organizations thinking about backing up to the cloud.
We answer the questions you may have about cloud backups and explain the features.
We explain the 3-2-1 rule and why you need it.
We will show you why cloud backup is the most effective way to protect your data and get it offsite.
Should You Backup Everything?
You would automatically think you should backup everything, but should you? Just as you should think and plan what it is you want to backup, you also need to give thought to what you don’t need to backup. Backing up what you don’t need wastes time and backup disk space on your backup server and won’t help you recover from a disaster. So what don’t you need? Read More
How To Backup Google Drive
Google Drive is a well known cloud drive service that allows you to store documents and data in the cloud. It is used more and more by small businesses as a way to collaborate and to share documents and data with people worldwide. For all its robustness though, it has some deficiencies, so here’s how you can backup Google Drive.
Three reasons why you want to backup Google Drive
Google Drive is a great product and useful for small and even medium sized businesses, however it is still a pretty rudimentary product. It does what it does well, but it is not what you would call feature rich. Here’s three things it is missing.
1. Unwanted Changes
Staff using Google Drive online are using a “real time” editing system. Changes made to a document or sheet are continually being saved. The only option to restore a delete just made is to try the Undo button. When you backup Google Drive you will have the ability go back to the previous saved document and start again with your changes.
2. Versioning
Google Drive does not have any versioning capabilities. If staff need to revert or go back to see a document produced last week they can’t. However if your Cloud Backup is set to keep a number of days or months of data (the retention period) then you can be the hero and pull that version from your backup.
3. Archiving
Depending on your industry you may have policies in place for data protection and archiving. Google Drive provides no opportunity for that, but backup Google Drive and your data can be archived to long-term storage and retrieved as necessary.
How to Backup Google Drive
Unfortunately, you cannot backup Google Drive directly from the Google Drive website. You can, however, easily get around this by making a local copy using Google’s automated tool; the Google Drive Sync app. Google Drive Sync will synchronize your cloud drive data to a local drive. Once you have a local copy you can backup that local folder.
Google’s Sync app, as the name suggests, will synchronize everything on your Google drive to a local folder, and it does this automatically, in real time. The App is called “Drive”, you can find it at the top right of Google Drive, under Settings, when you are logged in to your Google Drive account.
Step 1:
Simply click, download, and install the Google Drive Sync App. During the installation designate a folder that you want to sync to. Remember that folder location as you will need it for the backup portion. Once Google Drive is set up it will synchronize all your Google Drive data to that local folder.
Google Drive Sync sits in your task tray at the bottom right of your screen, and runs in the background. Hover over it to see if everything has sync’d.
[TIP: Google Drive Sync actually improves your efficiency by being local. You could share the folder to other local users that could map to it directly rather than going to the Google website, and use can work on your files without having an Internet connection.]
Step 2:
Now download the CloudPockets Cloud Backup software and install it, or configure the backup software you have. Configure the backup schedule and include that Google Drive folder in the list of folders to be backed up.
Set a retention period for the backups to be seven days or more you will be able to go back up to seven days and restore the revision you need. If you need longer you can change the number of days. Just keep in mind that a longer retention period means the backup has to save more copies and will use a bit more backup drive space.
Step 3:
Save all the settings and let the backup run at the designated time. You now have all the advantages of Google Drive, have overcome its deficiencies, and you have a backup!
One More Thing
Now that you have Google Drive backed up you may want to move all your critical data to the Google Drive folder so that they are available to you wherever you are, and they are all fully backed up for safety.
How To Avoid The Pain Of Computer Failure
I got a message last week from a contact in LinkedIn anxiously asking for help. Their laptop had died. Well, not just died, it burned! They sent me a picture. You can see the battery at the top that has melted, and the white stuff – well that’s Fire Extinguisher power or whatever else they threw on it to make the flames stop.
Read More
VMWare Backup To Cloud And Local Drive
A VMWare backup will protect your new virtualized environment so that you can restore the server image as quickly as possible. As a Canadian business you probably also want to keep that backup in Canada, and you’ll want both an onsite and off-site recovery method. All this is possible with some easy configuration and planning.
Hard Drive Failure Can Be Planned For
Ugh, a hard drive failure. The hard drive is still likely the most fragile component on a computer. Sure, they have got more robust over the years, and can survive more G-forces than they used to. But the problem is not really the hard drive itself, the problem is that people keep dropping their computers. Or, they get knocked onto the floor by associates, pets, or the laptop just gets generally abused over time. The result? A hard drive failure.
Read More
My Laptop Recovery – After It Died Today
I did a laptop recovery this morning – because it was completely dead when I woke up this morning.
I had everything I needed to continue on in about two hours. Want to know how?
Read More
The Danger of “Set and Forget” And Your Backup
When was the last time you actually checked to see if your backup was working properly?
Has it been a while?
Many backup providers (ourselves included) talk about “set and forget” and that things should just take care of themselves, however this is your critical data we’re talking about here. What would you do if it was gone? unrecoverable?
Here’s a few things to check. Read More
CloudPockets Now Backs Up Your Mac
Attention all Mac users!
CloudPockets.com has released a Mac version of their popular online backup client.
CloudPockets has had a Windows based client since 2010 and now enables customers with Apple computers to back them up using the same easy and intuitive software client. Read More
The Day Jason Restores The Backup
Jason had always looked at the backup system out of the corner of his eye. He never really liked it. He would dutifully take the tape out of its mouth each morning and feed it another one from the box of tapes he kept at his desk. He had somehow inherited this one day when someone had left and he knew it was important but he didn’t really understand how it all worked.
So the day when the system failed Jason knew he was in trouble. Everyone watched him expectantly as he walked slowly from his desk with his box of tapes in his hands and headed to the door at the back of the office where the equipment and the backup system was kept.
He was sweating and his heart was racing and he wanted nothing more than to run away and hide under a rock. It was going to be a long and horrible day… Read More